To Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

by Svetlana Alliluyeva

There is no doubt that the whole of life is governed by a design of which we know nothing and of which we are not conscious. For this reason, coincidences which are foreordained always seem strange to us. One such strange “chance,” after my flight from Delhi, was my encounter in Italy with Doctor Zhivago.

In Rome I was given this work of genius which has been published in Russian in Milan, but which is banned in Russia and read there only in secret. Up till then I had only a very vague idea of the novel from what I had been told about it by friends.

For me it was a quite unexpected encounter with Russia at a moment when I had just left her, and when circumstances were such that all my thoughts were elsewhere. And this encounter with the Russian tongue at its most powerful went through me like a shock, like a great surge of electricity.

The Great Tragedy overwhelmed me like a squall of rain and snow, like an avalanche, like a hurricane striking by night with lightning and cloudbursts.

Everything became confused in this storm which lashed my heart and engulfed me in floods of tears.

Everything was mixed up — my own life and other people’s, the faces of my loved ones and those of figures in the novel, their words and my thoughts, the tears and pain of us all — it all merged together in my mind and swept over me with ever greater force.

Drinking in my tears, I read and reread these lines which sounded in my ears like organ music. I listened to them, breathed them in with all my being, and choked with the pain of them.

My beloved, long-suffering, baffled Russia, where I have left my children and my friends to live our unbearable Soviet life, a life so unlike anything else that it can never be imagined by Russians abroad, whether friendly or hostile to it, my beloved children, the indelible memory of my husband and the pain, bleeding like a wound, of his death — all this, merging with the world created by the author’s imagination, rose up before me with tenfold intensity, and sometimes I felt that the whole world must be overwhelmed, together with me, by waves of love and tears.

The Russia I have lost, the Russia that has been taken from me by a cruel fate, as she was taken from Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago, from Tonya, from Lara, and from their children, my unforgettable, suffering Russia . . . wolves howl on your snow-covered plains, the land is still prey to folly and desolation, and there is no end to the rule of the Pharisees, to the power of the dead letter over the living deed. I shall not see you again, I shall not see you for a long time, you have been taken away, abducted — taken away from all those to whom you were so dear. No one ran after you and brought you back —just as when Lara was being taken away and Zhivago, weeping, watched the sleigh that was taking her, hoping against hope that it would “turn back,” but knowing that it would not.

But what am I saying? Who took her away? I went away myself. I gave her up myself. Well, that’s what Zhivago did — he left her of his own free will, he gave her up, abandoned her to the wicked and the vulgar. He did not come to her rescue, but just watched as she went away, and wept at the inevitable, because it had to be this way, and he knew it. . .

My darling Katya, my heart’s blood, straight as a rowan tree, sweet as a cherry, what have I done to you?! I have left you all alone, my love, and how you must be crying there now, though you are such a brave girl and don’t like to be a crybaby, my little one.

What have I done to myself: I shall not see you for a long, long time, I have given you up with my own hands, as Lara gave up her own beloved Tanya. . . And then Lara also had a daughter called Katya from a husband she didn’t love — but what does that matter to us women, we love our children because we give birth to them. . .

Oh, yes, and then wasn’t my second husband, whom I did not love, also called Yuri Andreyevich? He was not much to look at, but he was clever, clever in a cold, mechanical way, the same as the machinelike commissar Antipov, who had a blueprint instead of a heart inside him. . . How similar they were! How similar they were, with all their revolutionary ideas and phrases spinning around like cogs in a machine, but fixed forever in the same spot. . .

All these faces mingle and blur, I can’t understand through my tears why the names are the same — as though there weren’t plenty of other Russian names! . . .

Dear, dear Yuri Andreyevich, this gifted and humble doctor whose name comes from the word for “life,” from the word for everything living — “Zhivago” in Church Slavic . . . such a fine, unassuming, and intelligent person, and how many there are like that in Russia! But with all this humility, diffidence, and lack of ostentation, how pure of heart and noble of mind, what a deep sense of duty and lifelong devotion to work . . . just like our great Chekhov, also both doctor and artist, who knew and loved life without any trappings, as scientists and astronomers love it. . . How he suffers, this gifted and hardworking man, at the hollow sound of empty words divorced from the realities of life! How wearied he is by the ceaseless talk of Liberius, the partisan leader, by those nightly disquisitions about “the dawn of a new life,” while all the time the wounded wait for him, and there is nothing but blood and death all around, and people have been crazed by the slaughter, and can no longer tell friend from foe. . . How well he understands and loves words which are apt and meaningful, words which come unaffectedly from the heart, words born of truth, words endowed with sense and feeling. This is why the spells and songs of the old witch Kubarikha are like balm to his soul, for in them he hears the voices of birds, trees, and grass; and in them he hears the voice of Lara, too, and he sees himself puny and helpless in the Siberian forest. And then, meek and humble as he is, he wants to kill Liberius for those meaningless words which only rob people of their sleep and prevent them from working.

Yes, he had a magical command of words, he wrote poetry, he healed the sick, he loved the daily round of life in all its fullness and vigor, he shunned no work, however menial, he was a true aristocrat of the spirit, he labored for the good of his fellowmen. And there was no place for him in a society that demanded of him service to the dead letter instead of work and the single-minded exercise of his creative powers. Small wonder that he found himself an outcast, doomed slowly to sink lower and lower.

The way he stands in the doorway with those buckets in his hands and apologizes to the man who was once his janitor and is now an up-andcoming member of society, full of the insolence that comes from a sense of power. But the doctor just goes on carrying water for the laundry to his room, and every time he asks to be excused for splashing on the floor. . .

Again faces merge into each other. Whom does he remind me of with those buckets in his hands?

Why do I see you, Andrusha,¹ my poor suffering friend, standing barefoot with buckets of cold water in your hands, your hair unkempt and your clothes in rags?. . . I have never seen you with buckets in your hands, but perhaps you have to carry water, in the place where you are now, and that is how I picture you in my mind’s eye. And that terrible Moscow communal apartment in Khlebny Street, where you did your writing in the cellar because you hadn’t a proper workroom —it was so much like the janitor’s room in Doctor Zhivago. And ex-janitors, just like Markel in the novel, now shout at your wife and Yegorushka, and at you too, I suppose, in the place to which you have been sent. And all you can do is shuffle your bare feet and listen in silence. . . You never did have much to say for yourself, Andrusha, and you were not the most handsome man in the world, but you had the stubborn courage to be true to yourself and honest before your own conscience! Because wasn’t that why you wrote your stories and novels: to speak out, although in secret from others, what you thought, and to be honest with yourself, and with God?

I have had no news of you for a long time now, and I do not know whether or not you are well, and what other things have been meted out to you by your terrible fate. Nor do I know how long Maya and your small son will have to wait for you, and whether he will see you one day. . .

O martyrs of Russian literature! Nothing has changed since the days of Radishchev and the Decembrists. . . As before, it is given to gendarmes and policemen to be the first critics of a writer’s work. Except that in Russia under the Czars neither Gogol nor Shchedrin was ever brought to trial for the sharpness of his satirical fantasies, and they were not punished for laughing at the absurdities of Russian life. But now you can be tried for a metaphor, sent to a camp for figures of speech!

All this is more than flesh and blood can stand, dear doctor, dear Boris Leonidovich. All this is more than I can bear to see, people of the whole world, and this is why I am here, and not there, in Russia. How much longer, doctor, will it go on, how much longer?

Doctor Chekhov . . . Doctor Speransky . . . Doctor Vinogradov . . . Doctor Pletnev — Lord, they too were persecuted for nothing at all — Doctor Kaufman . . . Doctor Dadiani . . . Doctor Morozov. . .

Again faces get mixed up and blurred. . . Doctor Morozov — yes, of course, my son will be a doctor in two years’ time, like his grandfather and his great-grandfather before him. How glad I am that you too will be a doctor, and you will not waste your life on empty verbiage.

My child, you must be strong, you must brace yourself— for the sake of Lenochka, for the sake of Katya. You must not despair, we have not parted forever. You are it sensitive boy, and you will be hurt by the mean looks you will get from the petty-minded “common citizens,” but you must be above all that! You will find you have more friends than you think, and even those who condemn me will come to help you, and all of you, my little ones. . .

Let them all condemn me — and you condemn me as well, if that will make things easier for you (say whatever you like: it will only be empty words, and they will not hurt me), only do not reject me in your hearts, my children, because you are more precious to me than anything in the world, my dear ones, and I think of you constantly, and I pray for you, since nobody here prevents me from doing so. . .

Did I understand that I was losing you? Did I realize what an unspeakable burden of misfortune and sorrow I was freely taking on my shoulders? I suppose not. But now, as I read this book, the terrible reality of my loss has struck me like a thunderbolt.

Every word of this astonishing book comes to me as a revelation about my own life, and about the life of the Russia I knew. Not for nothing is it the culmination of the great poet’s lifework. I keep coming across things that I feel I have seen or heard before. Some of the people in the novel seem familiar, as though I had met them some time or other in my life. I have seen and heard it all, I know the smell and taste of this moonlit snow, of this frozen rowan tree, of Siberian rivers in flood, of unheated cluttered rooms in Moscow’s communal apartments. . .

I am not abandoning you, my children, and I am not betraying you — pay no attention to the slanderous things they will say about me — but this was the way fife would have it. Everything is preordained and decided for us by life itself. You must understand that events are taking their inevitable course. Fate has decreed that I leave you, that I change my whole fife and not return to that futile existence which I have led for forty years. It is the will of fate, perhaps, that I should do something for the benefit of all — and for you, too, my dear ones.

I have crossed my Rubicon. If you are still there, far away from me, it is so that I may pray for you, so that I may believe with all my heart in our reunion, so that I may be stronger in spirit, so that I may fight and live without despair, so that the pain of it shall cover me like armor. How wise are the ways of Your world, O Lord: You are not giving me this new life just so that I should peacefully enjoy the comforts of the civilized world.

No, Lord, You have given me words I did not know before. You have commanded me to speak the truth to people, to all the people in the world, so that my friends there, in Russia, should also wake from their long sleep, and should be startled out of it, as though by a shot, and come to feel themselves that there can be a limit to what human beings may endure.

And wasn’t it to change my futile life that You sent me a messenger from faraway India? But, oh, how I was stabbed in the heart, what a sharp knife pierced my back. . .

Lara, Lara, you were life and love, you were a swift-flowing river, you were a woodland full of the golden sun, and a rowan tree of fiery red — how you warmed everyone around you, how good people felt when you were near. But no one could protect you, nor could you protect yourself.

How can it protect itself, a tree in bloom — a cherry tree, an apple tree, or a rowan, full of sunlight and birds and the humming of bees? It is all blossom and fragrance, and it gives joy and happiness to everyone around it, but can it protect itself, if thieves and scoundrels come with axes and saws?

No, how can it? Its wounds will weep and its flowers fade, its leaves will fall, and soon it will turn black, and wither and die. It will die quietly, without a struggle, doing harm to no one. . .

You were just such a good, defenseless, sun-filled tree, my unforgettable one, my love, my prince from a faraway country, and you couldn’t take root in our bleak land. . . There can be no peace or forgiveness for those who cut down defenseless trees which bring joy and warmth to people. There can be no forgiveness for them, there can never, never be peace for them! Your name tolls in my heart, sounding an alarm, and I shall never forget or forgive the despicable wielders of the ax.

As you lay in your coffin in our dismal Moscow crematorium, strangers came up to look at your calm, beautiful face. It was very cold, and we stood there in fur coats, Indians and Russians, and my dear, dark-skinned Lilya, and you, Irisha, and you, Olya, and all of you, my dear friends from the unfortunate Institute of World Literature. And none of them could take their eyes off your face, which now looked so distinguished and beautiful.

My poor love, my poor prince! You gave your life for me, not just figuratively, as people are always promising, but quite literally. You could have gone back to your warm country, you did not have to work in Moscow. You were ill and our climate was deadly for you, but you stayed there all the same and took on work that was too much for you, because you did not want to leave me all alone. My poor knight, who came to my rescue in the goodness of your heart, how fearlessly you gave up your country, your work, the whole of your familiar, carefree life in India for something quite different, to help me; you knew how much I needed you at my side. . . I have heard many fine words of love in my life, but who stood by me so bravely, who took such a risk in the evening of his life, before the sun went down, throwing away everything he had, his health and his life, for my sake?

Our meeting wasn’t mere chance, you know. Just think where you had come from, all the countries you had been to before, what a prison I had lived in the whole of life —just so that one day I should meet you. It was too propitious, too full of meaning to be accidental. You were ill and lonely, you had a sad, kindly smile, you were so understanding and compassionate, so full of humor and melancholy. You took in everything at a glance, you didn’t have to be told, even though you had dropped from another planet into my stagnant, unhappy life.

Do you remember those first days in the hospital where we met, and how we told each other our life stories? We were both unhappy and lonely, each of us was weighed down by a long, unusual history, and each of us was waiting for a gentle hand of human understanding. What did we care about politics, systems of government, ideologies, parties, and organizations of one sort or another!

How they immediately rose up in arms against us, the Party hypocrites and Pharisees! What deadly danger they saw to themselves in a human attachment and love that took no account of their usual rules! What could they know about us, how could they understand us, these miserable compilers of dossiers and denunciations? All they could see was that you were a foreigner, and it horrified them.

My poor dear, how sick you were, and how you suffered, as your life slowly ebbed away, and you became better and kinder every clay, and the small vanities and trivialities of life gradually left you. And there was nothing I could do to help, I loved you more and more with every day, as I watched you die — a tree whose roots have been cut.

How great were your pity and love for me, how sorry you were for all us blind, unhappy wretches who had never seen the outside world, or other countries, or other cities, or any other way of life. You so much wanted to show me India, Europe, the whole world, and this good country of Switzerland, which you loved so much. But all that was forbidden and out of the question — for all of us. . .

What a beautiful forehead you have, how soft and loving are your lips. . . “And you shall kiss me with a last kiss. . .”

“Oh, I can’t bear it. The pain of it . . . Oh, Lord! Think of it! This is again something in our style, something we know about. Your going, and the end of me. That’s again something big and inescapable. The riddle of life, the riddle of death, the beauty of genius, the beauty of loving — that, yes, that we understood. As for such petty trifles as reshaping the world —*no thank you, such things are not for us. Good-bye, my big one, my dear one, my own, my pride. . . .”

What is this? Who is this talking? It’s Lara saying good-bye to Doctor Zhivago. It is I saying good-bye to you, my knight, and kissing your pure forehead with a last kiss. Yes, it is I. All this is about you and me, too. “Your going, and the end of me.” Your going was the end of my former life — I felt at the time that my life could never be the same, after your going, only I didn’t yet know when and how it would change. But fate already knew and was preparing the way. Nobody can escape what fate has in store.

This you knew and understood, Boris Leonidovich, and no one could give the lie to your wisdom, however much they tried. And I have been pondering your great wisdom as an artist and thinker, since God has given me a short breathing space to collect my thoughts and to recover from all the calamities and blows of fate I have had to suffer in the last three years.

Dear, kindly Switzerland seems to have been specially created to restore a person’s spiritual balance — the air is so sweet and healing, the roads wind so softly over hills and valleys, the new grass in the fields is so fresh, the blue-eyed children and grown-ups are so friendly.

It is now early spring, and it is still cold, the leaves are not out yet, but the buds have burst on all the trees and are waiting for warmth. The brooks and streams are pure and clear, with trout playing in them.

It often rains, but it’s a cheerful, spring rain, mingled with the ceaseless chirping and singing of birds. The earth is still cold, but the violets in the woods are out, and around all the houses there are tulips, narcissi, hyacinths, and snowdrops. There is also a plant I have never seen before — it is covered all over with yellow flowers but has no leaves: nearly every house has one of these brightly glowing yellow trees.

From my window I can see a winding emerald river, green fields, freshly plowed earth, and hillsides where the woods are still bare and mauve, but already decked here and there with yellow catkins. Everything is quiet and calm — the people, the land, and these old houses with the pointed roofs, and the narrow roadways. All is bursting with healthy, placid life, and waiting for spring and warmth.

How fortunate for me that it is almost spring, that I can see round about this eternal and inexorable renewal of life. What a breath of air and how soothing it is, this feeling of expectancy and faith in life, after the death of my husband, after all the indignities which I have endured in Moscow and in Delhi, after all the pain and sorrow, after all the ordeals. Thank you, blue-eyed Switzerland, for being so good to me!

And on sunny days the snow-covered mountains are dazzlingly bright, lakes and rivers glitter, and there is such a ring of triumph all around, from the earth right up to the sky, that the soul wants to leap from the breast and fly up high, singing like a lark, and I am afraid of nothing when my extraordinary world — Your world, O Lord — is so beautiful.

And now it’s spring with you too, my children and friends, the snow is melting, the rivers are flowing swiftly. Take a deep breath of the air, which is fermenting like new wine, look up at the sun, and be afraid of nothing, my dear ones, be afraid of nothing.

And do not cry, do not cry, my dear ones — may the spring breathe on you with its fresh breezes and help you to believe in the inevitable victory and rebirth of life.

Switzerland, March, 1967
TRANSLATED BY MAX HAYWARD

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